Faith Ringgold (American) b. 1930, The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles, 1991 Acrylic on canvas, tie dyed, pieced fabric border, 74 X 80”, Private Collection

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch) “Sunflowers” Oil on Canvas, 36 X28” National Gallery, London

Faith Ringgold Vincent Van Gogh

In The Quilting Bee at Arles, Ringgold depicts a number of famous black women from different time periods called together by Aunt Melissa for an imaginary quilting bee. The location of this quilting bee is the southern French town of Arles, where Vincent van Gogh ( ) had painted his famous still life, The Sunflowers (1888). Even though his works have become some of the most famous and best loved in the world, van Gogh could not sell his art while he was alive.

Ringgold uses the figure of van Gogh to symbolize the Western stereotype of a great artist as a lone male genius. She sees a parallel in the tragic life of van Gogh to the sometimes-tragic lives of the notable black women she has chosen to depict. Each of these women took a stand on their own for freedom. Like the work of van Gogh, their brave and difficult commitment to equality was justified over the course of time. The women are pictured as quilters in order to piece together a better world, perhaps suggesting the value of collaboration versus the lone individual. Content is the message the artwork communicates. It is the meaning of the work.

Those portrayed are: Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made, American-born female millionaire (inventor of the hair-straightening comb) and a woman who gave her money to educational causes; Sojourner Truth could neither read nor write, but spoke brilliantly regarding women’s rights during slavery; Ida B. Wells exposed the horrors of lynching in the South. Fannie Lou Hamer braved great odds to register thousands of people to vote; Harriet Tubman, who brought over 300 slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad during the era of slavery in the U.S.; Rosa Parks, whose refusal to sit at the back of a segregated bus ignited the U.S. civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s; Mary McLeod Bethune founded Bethune Cookman College and was an advisor to Presidents Truman and Roosevelt; and Ella Baker organized thousands of people to improve the condition of poor housing, jobs, and consumer education.